Watch out for former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner on the New York mayoral ballot this year. He's been consulting with pollsters and advisers, and gauging his chances, and in a long comeback profile appearing in this weekend's New York Times Magazine looks to be leaning toward "yes": "[I]t's now or maybe never for me, in terms of running for something," he says. (Weiner—you might remember—got in some trouble two years ago after accidentally tweeting a (clothed) photograph of his engorged member to his 60,000 followers; it came out over the course of several agonizing and hilarious days that he had been cybering with several women he'd met online, though never in person.)

The mayoral decision aside, the profile, which considers Weiner and his wife, longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, is itself is a fascinating document, and one about which we have several questions, to wit:

"One prominent state politician called [Weiner] to confess that he was a sex addict and urged Weiner to join his support group." Who is this politician???

"‘Let's fight! Defend! I don't understand. Why don't you just say this is not your picture?' [Abedin said to her husband.]" Did Abedin even look at the photo, and if so, did she not recognize her husband's junk-filled underwear??

"'Anthony and I had not spent more than 10 consecutive days together until I was pregnant and we went to Italy and France for two weeks,' [Abedin] told me." I mean? Come on?

Weiner comes across, unsurprisingly, as a neurotic mess whose vaunted attempts at self-examination are, given that he still harbors fantasies of putting himself in the exact unhealthy position that led to all the crotch shots, clear failures. The real star of the profile is Abedin, whose on-message focus and forward-moving intensity show her, if nothing else, to have been well-prepared for this:

Advertisement

When I ask Abedin if Clinton guided her through those first terrible days, she says: "We've had a lot of personal conversations, none of which I feel comfortable talking about. But what I will say about her, and for that matter her entire family, the unconditional love and support they have given me has been a real gift. And I think she would be O.K. with me saying this, because I know she has said this before: at the end of the day, at the very least, every woman should have the ability and the confidence and the choice to make whatever decisions she wants to make that are right for her and not be judged by it."